Jehovah’s Witnesses use Gaelic language to attract members in Northern Ireland

Jehovah's Witnesses are reaching out, in Gaelic, to Northern Ireland.JW.org

Within the last month, Jehovah’s Witnesses have been making the rounds in Northern Ireland, reaching out specifically to Irish speakers by using religious pamphlets printed in Gaelic.

As part of a month-long global campaign to publicize their new website and pamphlet, they are trying to “reach people with the language of their heart,” according to Jehovah’s Witnesses spokesman Mark O’Malley.

O’Malley, originally from Galway, has relatives in Connemara who are most comfortable speaking in Irish. He told the BBC that since they’ve started knocking on Belfast doors, several people impressed by the Irish tracts have provided the organization with positive feedback.

The organization has members in 239 countries, and prints its pamphlets in almost 700 languages. It also provides audio versions of its literature for languages without a written script, such as Sylheti, spoken by over 10 million in India and Bangladesh.

Following the positive recepetion of the Jehovah's Witnesses' Irish literature in Northern Ireland, O’Malley says that their next move is to print the brochures in Welsh and Scottish Gaelic.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses haven’t been the only organization to reach out to Irish language speakers in Northern Ireland, however. Last year, the leader of the new Northern Irish pro-union political party NI21, Basil McCrea, tweeted in Irish during European elections: